It only makes sense to start a new blog with "Hello World."
I actually have no clue what this is going to get used for, but that never stopped me with my actual blogs so... here I am!
I guess it'll be a log book/thoughts/improvements on Smash for Wii U. I don't play Melee (my friends don't want to play so I don't feel any motivation to learn), but I do enjoy watching and following the competitive scene. I technically started with Melee back in 3rd grade, but I didn't own the game and I only played for a few minutes at a time at the daycare I went to for a few months. I really actually played a Smash game when Brawl came out. By happenstance, I found myself in possession of a Wii (thanks, dad) and one of the few games I personally wanted to own was Super Smash Bros. Brawl. I think I technically started as a Toon Link main. I loved how fast he felt in the air, and his down-air was basically the best thing in the world back then. At some point I decided to switch over to Zero Suit Samus, mainly because a youtuber I happened to watch for Fire Emblem (NickRiddle) happened to upload clips his games, and his ZSS looked amazing. I never got into the competitive side of things, but I do remember being absolutely crushed by a family friend one time and feeling frustrated. Brawl was the casual party game for me when people were over (besides Rock Band, I guess). I didn't know a competitive scene really existed until 2013 or so when a friend of a friend hosted a Brawl tournament at a local community centre. I entered with a few friends (in doubles only), and we technically went 1-2 (the first opponent wasn't there so they were DQ'd) even though we won 0 games. I have a inside joke with my teammate about how his Snake took more of my stocks (3) than the opponents did.
A few years later (2014 or so), I got myself a Wii U using my family's Air Mile points (took like 5000 or something). I got it in preparation for the new Smash game. Even if I was a super casual scrub, I still enjoyed the game. I started to follow the competitive Melee scene sometime in 2015. Probably because the Leffen vs Mang0 Apex 2015 money match Reddit thread was at the top of /r/all. I pretty much only used Reddit for League of Legends, but I guess I was bored that day. After joking about doing it for a while, sometime in 2016 I decided to enter my first Smash 4 tournament. Mind you, I am still basically a casual player, so I expected to go 0-2 and be fodder for the winner of the tourney (I think Big D won it?). Surprisingly, there was round robin pools, and I won a set vs some other casual scrub like me and didn't go 0-7 or whatever the worst record was. From then until now, I've only entered 2 more tournaments. One super casual one with round robin pools again. I do remember feeling a bit nervous and concerned about that one, and didn't exactly play well (for my casual standards anyways). I don't think I won a set in my pool but I took 1 or 2 games off others.
My latest tournament was a few weeks ago. There were no pools since it was only 60~ people, so it was just bracket. I entered both singles and doubles (with that Brawl tourney teammate!), and got trounced in both. I expected literally nothing in doubles. My teammate and I had never played doubles, and were both just casual scrubs who played each other. We were looking to take at least 2 stocks per game, and I think we barely achieved that. Doubles is confusing. There's so much happening on such a small stage that it becomes hard to tell where I am sometimes. I would love to play more doubles, but as I only play with friends (and only 2 of them care about being slightly competitive), it usually is just 1v1s. In singles I went 1-2. My first match was against the TO, who refreshed my memory about the terror that is Bayonetta. Game 1 I lost both stocks to some Bayo combo that went off the top. Game two he SD'd the first stock and then I only did about 90% for the second stock. In losers, I was paired against another seemly casual scrub. We ended up playing Lucina dittos after I picked Lucina. I won 2-1. Lost the first game, then won games 2&3 in what is close to last hit situations (maybe not in game 3).
I guess I am primarily a Marth/Lucina player. On Cloud's release, I really enjoyed playing him, but the stigma of being 'carried by their character' was too much for me to really play him more in the tournaments I went to. Nowadays it is much less, but the first two tournaments I went to had that stigma at a 120%. It's kind of amusing because I am definitely carried by my character, considering how bad I am at the actual game. I guess I kind of have a character crisis right now. I enjoy playing sword characters (Corrin, Marth, Lucina, Cloud), and I tend to do better with Corrin & Cloud. But I've always been inspired by Marth (primarily from Melee, but MKLeo's Marth is beautiful too) and how precise a player needs to be to choose between tippers and sour-spot hitboxes. I also love fast characters. Sheik feels so fun to play as she falls fast, runs fast, and drifts fast. Cloud is all of that. A sword. Spacing. Fast. But the stigma makes it hard for me to consistently pick Cloud (even my casual friends understand Cloud is stronger than the other characters). Corrin is everything I love about Cloud, but with a slightly better recovery and is much, much slower. Neutral air for both Cloud and Corrin is amazing. Marth is the pinnacle character for me. The whole spacing thing and just how graceful he looks makes it fun to pick him. But his options always feels limited because of my lack of skill. Lucina is just the easier version of Marth. I don't ever have to worry about tipper/non-tipper spacing and just go for a hit.
The only reason I'm on the website is that after the recent tournament my doubles teammate and our 3rd friend who came to watch both expressed a desire to play more and learn more about the game. I always wanted to get better, but I never wanted to go to tournaments because I'm nervous and shy about it. I'm also bad, so it's probably not the most fun having to JV3 stock some noob player who's on the rotation anyways. Having friends who would want to play made me a lot more likely to want to play. The 3rd friend has gotten a lot better in the last 3 weeks (from not being able to up-B as Lucina to recover to learning how to stage spike [I can't even do this properly yet]), and my doubles teammate has "mastered" (used jokingly of course) the mix-up between 24/7 rolling and delayed rolling as Little Mac to tilt me beyond belief when I miss my roll punished because he rolled 3 more times in random directions.
I guess I just want to stop losing to what was called a "For Glory" Little Mac (by some guy at the tournament) and be a decent player in my region (somewhere in the middle of skill level). Decent enough that I won't go 0-2 in bracket right away, but not good enough to beat our PR players. Though beating Captain L, Big D, and Locus would feel super good (especially L since he gave me a bit of shit at my first tourney), I'm realistic enough that I don't think it is in my future at all.
Maybe I'll get another Ethernet cord and plug it into my Wii U to play some For Glory. God knows that my wifi battles with varying lag (.5 seconds to 2 seconds) are the worst practice I've ever had.
Hopefully a month from now I still have this motivation/drive to play. I guess it'll depend on if my 3rd friend bails on wanting to play Smash, since he doesn't ever want to get too invested into a game after what happened with him and League of Legends.
See 'ya.